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Genkinaonna - thanks for your comments. New Zealand or babies isn't really an either/or, you know - people have babies here all the time. But I hope you make it sometime. And there's ALWAYS chicken.

Nick: access to MC finished? Tragedy! How does it feel, being 'one of us' again? I'm really looking forward to that/those book/books. Let's hope we're in one of the earlier groups.

I've been saving this for a special occasion and the end of the blog seems like a good time. If any of you have been idly wondering what this strange person from the distant land might look like - this is scarily accurate!

Thanks Nick. Give me a call if you're coming over and we'll see if we can find some foodie entertainment for you. There are lots of other restaurants I'd have liked to have included due to time (and budgetary) restraints. Marinated fig ice cream? I'm on my way! How much has Modernist Cuisine got on ice cream? Any interesting enhancements you could post to the Cooking with MC thread?

Hi Kent. Thanks for that. I dabbled in desktop publishing in a past life and some of it has stuck. On Dad's side of the family I'm the fourth generation - third on Mum's. And your theory on Pavlova/pavlova is as good as any! One difference is a pav is just one word - it's not Meringue Pavlova, for example - where the Melba and the Wellington are [ingredient] [name] combinations. There's been a book published on the history of the pavlova; I might have to see if the library's got it.

Thanks, judiu. I'm working on the Lotto thing myself ... it's not working very well, though.

Hi Shelby. That sunset is the view from our deck, looking out towards the airport and Cook Strait. Lovely for a (Lighthouse) gin and tonic after work. Go on, make a pavlova. Tinned fruit is also quite acceptable as a topping. Thanks for your responses and questions during the week.

Helen: I don't know, always on about wind. Maybe you should see somebody. Yep, I have to store my ice cream in the freezer but I don't have to compete for space with an empty freezing container from the machine. The Cuisinart doesn't seem to care what the outside temperature is; the only slightly messy part when it's warmer is transferring the finished product from the machine to a container for freezing. And yes, the ice cream is definitely as good as it looks, if not better (I was reflecting last night after I'd gone to bed that for many of the things I'd demonstrated I'd got all tied up in the 'how' and forgotten to pass on the 'how does it taste'. So I shall remedy that now; my bay ice cream is still certainly a dessert component. It's sweet and creamy, but what the bay brings is a fascinating, rounded savoury character. Which sounds slightly contradictory, but it really works. It's possible to argue there are no bad pavlovas, just good and better ones. Agreed? I have an ambition some day to invent a savoury one, but I haven't got very far yet.

Donna: thanks very much. I will!

Hi Erin. Now, see, I KNOW you weren't serious about oil on icecream. Might be an interesting thought, though; if you can make olive oil ice cream - I haven't but I've seen it - why not use infused oils for an extra dimension? Hmmm ... How should you use them? People ask me the same question at the craft fairs. The simple answer is: whenever you'd use oil. I cook with them, when I might otherwise use plain EVO. And that means both frying and over a roast befor it goes into the oven (day 1's roast lamb would have had some rosemary over the top if it hadn't had such a good fat layer). I drizzle them on salads; they go well on roast vegetables. I don't think I've tried them on pasta, but no reason why not. Yes, a MyCook is a Spanish rendition of the Thermomix - a food processor than weighs and cooks. My megapav is pretty much as follows: For the six egg whites one from yesterday), add 30ml of cold water after the initial beat, and keep beating. Pour in 425g of caster sugar (normal sugar may not dissolve properly and you'll get a different result). Slow down the mixer - or stop it - and add 30ml each of vinegar and vanilla extract, and 20g cornflour (cornstarch). Cook at 150°C for an hour, turn the oven off and leave the pav in there to cool. All the measurements above were simply doubled from the three egg original with no science applied, but it works. As does tripling for a nine egg whopper. Good luck - let us all see the results.

And one more for tonight before I go beddy-byes: I seem to have been generating an unusual amount of leftovers this week. I think it must be your fault; you're making me cook new things rather than get rid of yesterday's dinner. There's even still a large piece of last Sunday's cold lamb in the fridge - I'll have to do something with that when you're not watching. But I can't blame you completely, because tonight we had leftovers from something I did a few nights back and for some reason didn't tell you about. No matter. I'll tell you about it now. Actually I do dimly remember saying something earlier this week about a high-temperature chicken dish of my own devising. This is it. As with most things of my own devising,this may not look sophisticated, but it certainly has some flavour. Ready to get your hands dirty? OK, here we go. We start with fresh basil (lots of it), peeled garlic, a few black peppercorns, a sprinkle of salt and a generous glug of olive oil. No, I can't be more precise - that's how this thing works. Vary the ratios to suit your taste. Mash them up in a mortar and pestle (or a blender, but you want this to stay fairly lumpy): Then take a chicken and cut the backbone out - poultry shears are recommended, but you could do it with a knife if you were talented and careful. Turn the remains skin side up and press the breastbone to flatten the bird a little. Cut slashes in the meaty areas to help the flavour get it. Now - here's the bit where you get your hands dirty - slather the pesto all over the chicken. It won't mind: Make plans to clean your oven quite soon and heat it to 200°C. Put the chicken in for about 45 minutes, or until it's quite brown. Keep an eye on it; you don't want it to go too far. This is about what you're aiming for: What always amazes me about this treatment is how juicy the chicken stays. All you have to do now is dismember and serve it with an accompaniment of your choice, in this case baby peppers and zucchini sautéed in olive oil (yes, I use a LOT of olive oil!): So ... that's one less thing I have to fight my way around to get into the fridge. Thanks for your help. And with that, your Wellington foodblog sinks slowly in the west. Thanks again for coming along for the ride. It's been surprisingly exhausting, but a lot of fun. Maybe we'll do it again sometime. Goodnight, and good eating!

OK, boys and girls ... we're drawing rapidly to a close with this week's foodblog and I'd like to thank everybody for reading it and sharing my part of the food and drink world for a while. Your responses have been great; some of them have made me do some extra work to find out some things I didn't know. But we haven't finished yet. I promised you ice cream, so ice cream you will have. I started making it maybe a year ago, having puzzled for some time over the choice of machine. I decided to go with the Cuisinart with built-in freezing unit; the idea of cluttering up the freezer with a largeish bowl I might use only once every week or two didn't appeal. It's a noisy little beast, but I console myself by remembering it's only for 40 minutes or so at a time. The next issue was recipes. Like many of you, I'm sure, I'm always pulling interesting recipes out of magazine or (more often) websites. Including this one, naturally. I'd found a few ice cream recipes which sounded good but were only OK; then I found one for cinnamon flavour and I was made - that one is now the basis for all the flavours I make. I'd love to credit the source, but I didn't make a note of it. So if you've ever published a cinnamon ice cream recipe on the Web, maybe it's yours I'm using and getting a lot of pleasure from. Thanks. I have a limited range of flavours I make often, and several others I'm going to make ... one day. Cinnamon, ginger and vanilla are three of my regulars, and are very good, if not that unusual. The one I'm going to talk about now, though, is bay. We're having a bit of a bay day - first infused oil, now ice cream. There's nothing exotic about this recipe, but it works really well. We start with milk and cream: They go into a large pot with some fresh bay leaves, some sugar and a pinch of salt: We bring them up to boiling point or close to it, then turn the heat off and let the bay infuse for an hour. Or more, depending on how strong you want it. The next step involves the fruit of the hen: All we need for this is the yolks, so find another use for the whites. A pavlova is good: While we whisk them, the milk/cream/bay mix is back on the heat. Try not to let it get to boiling point this time. Now we're at probably the most crucial stage; us ice cream professionals [snort] call it tempering. If you put your eggs into the hot milk/cream, they'd probably scramble so instead, slowly and carefully, pour some of the hot mixture into the eggs while still whisking them. Stop when you've transferred between a third and half of the milk/cream. Now the contents of the egg bowl can all go into the pot with the remaining milk/cream. We keep stirring the mix over the heat. I like a silicone spatula for this, but wooden spoons work fine too. At a certain point - I now do it by eye, but I seem to remember it's when the temperature gets to about 90°C - the mix will begin to form a more persistent coating on the spoon. If you can run your finger through it and leave a track (careful; hot!), you're there. Now the hot mix can be strained (the leaves are still in there, so it's time we did something about that) into more cream in another bowl: Give that a good stir to blend everything, and you should have something looking a bit like this: Sit down, relax; that's your work done for tonight. When the custard has cooled, cover it with kitchen wrap and put it in the fridge overnight (it can be for a shorter time, but longer is better). In the morning, the chilled custard goes into the ice cream machine. 40 minutes later, you have this: At this stage it's still quite soft - like soft serve - so put it into a container you can seal and put it in the freezer to harden properly. Then you can look forward to tonight's dessert, which may look a little like this: I hit on bay as a flavour while talking to Angie at the City Market about her Alloro bay liqueur, which we like a lot. After I'd got it right I took some in to her; it was pronounced officially 'OMG'.

Thanks, Harry. I wonder if it's to do with the size? I've never had a dud, but I've never made the recipe with the ingredient quantities specified in Edmonds. Maybe I should try that to see what happens.

Picnic part 2 It's not quite such a stunning day as it's been during the week (naturally!), but still warm, so the picnic in the Wellington Botanic Gardens went ahead as planned. Teddy bears were invited, but only one turned up (he came with us). So ... you were wondering about the bacon and egg pie? Teddy enjoyed his piece too: This wasn't the only pie at the picnic. I'd been speaking to my friend Brenda about my plans to bring 'real' New Zealand food along, so on the way to the gardens she bought a 'real' meat pie for lunch. Back in the 80s, the height of culinary sophistication was the 'hedgehog', consisting of toothpicks with cheese, cocktail onions and pineapple stuck into a grapefruit half. Brenda made a more up to date version for us: Then there's my friend Bingo. I've been working on him to bake something - anything - but he refuses. He can handle meat, he says, but baking requires too much precision. Here's his lunch today - authentically New Zealand, certainly, but I despair: And finally - the pavlova. It was still slightly warm when it was time to leave home, so I whipped some cream with vanilla and took it and some berries along separately. At the gardens I put it all together: If you make one of these, don't try for 'elegant' - it probably won't work. But what's wrong with 'rustic'? My piece. OK, my first piece ... you can see the crisp outside and the fluffy inside: Hungry?

That's what eBay is for ... Your question about the water made me work a bit! I even went so far as to consult McGee, but although he has a good section on meringues he's silent on the subject of adding water to them. But then, fortunately, I thought I remembered something from a few years ago, and yes! The water, according to Khymos according to Hervé This, increases the volume of the egg whites. I wouldn't call the texture chewy. It's soft, and light, and foamy. The crisp bit only extends a few millimetres into the body. Improper ones (by definition, any that aren't like mine) are soft all the way through.

Nick, you might be able to ease the problem by keeping the ships in the harbour rather than letting them on the road. Just a thought.

Hi Pam. It's shared, but mostly me. Jane is much better at throwing something together in a hurry; I usually follow a recipe and take much more time. Being cool IS a practical reason, isn't it? We had much debate about that, right up to the time we walked in the door of the plumbing supplies shop. It does come in a lightless version as well, but I put on my most pathetic face and Jane agreed we'd ask if they had the one with the light in stock. If they did, OK; if not we'd have the other one. Guess what ...

Picnic part 1 As I mentioned earlier, we had a picnic scheduled today with some of the people from work. This seemed like a good excuse to show some of the 'real New Zealand food' you may have been wondering about. A favourite picnic food for me for many years (thanks Mum) is bacon and egg pie. Now, I feel this is an appropriate forum to lay down some rules. The main one is: IT'S NOT A PROPER ONE IF YOU RUIN IT BY PUTTING PEAS OR TOMATOES OR OTHER RUBBISH IN IT. I'm glad I got that off my chest. I feel so much better now. To continue ... In accordance with the rule above, my pies consist of bacon. And eggs. I will stretch to allowing a bit of fresh thyme, but that's it. Well, OK, and pastry. Some like to leave their eggs whole, but I like mine slightly beaten. There are five in this one, and the bacon is from a packet of smoky offcuts we get sometimes. It's what's left when the processor has sliced off all the 'presentation' slices for packaging and sale. It's not pretty - you get all sorts of funny lumps of meat in there - but it's very tasty and great to use for something like this. Costs less than the prettier stuff, too. I don't usually go to the extreme of decorating the pastry lid, but since it's for you: Hot oven, some 20-30 minutes later: You'll see how the inside turned out when we get to the picnic in part 2 below. You may have heard of the classic New Zealand dish, the pavlova. SInce I've been making lots of ice cream (I haven't showed you that yet, have I? I will, promise) I end up with lots of spare egg whites. I'm reluctant to throw them away, so a pav is the answer. Idle thought: as I've been writing this I've been thinking about how we use its name in print. Although it was named for a Russian dancer and hence could be considered a proper name, I seem to think I've only ever seen it in print with a small 'p'. I have no idea why this should be - Peach Melba (and, indeed, Beef Wellington) always have capitals. Any theories welcome. There are probably as many pavlova recipes as there are grandmothers (living or deceased), but the one I always use is from the foundation stone of every New Zealand kitchen, the Edmonds Cookery Book. Because of the number of egg whites I usually have, I always at least double the recipe in the book - sometimes triple. That makes a big pav, I can tell you. There is some debate about what a good one should be like, but I think the weight of opinion is on the side of crisp outside, fluffy inside. And that's what you're going to get. It's not a complicated thing to make, but I do recommend a stand mixer unless you have Conan's biceps. Start by beating the whites until they're stiff, add a bit of water and keep beating, then ungodly amounts of sugar (that's what will give it the crispy crust). Then a bit of cornflour, vinegar and vanilla, beat some more and that's it. I used an oven tray lined with kitchen paper today, but a silicone mat also works very well. When the mix is well beaten the texture is amazing - pure white, beautifully smooth and shapeable. Basically, you now plonk it all on your try, tidy it up a bit and you're ready to go. Warm oven (150°C) for about an hour (the book says 45 minutes, but I don't trust that for big versions), then leave it in to cool. At the end of the cooking time, the meringue is still just as you piled it on the tray; the colour is a little darker, of course. But when you eventually take it out of the oven, almost invariably the top crust will have collapsed. Congratulations: it's a proper one! I've had them much more caved-in than this, and it's not a problem - it'll hold the cream and fruit much better. OK - ready to go out to the picnic? Don't forget the bottle of wine from the fridge.

Thanks David. I was going to say you ain't seen nuttin' yet, but I don't think I'm going to top the Beef Wellington in a hurry. But one can try ...

[font="Trebuchet MS"]I know Erin's been waiting patiently for this one - last night I finally got round to making a batch of the herb-infused oil we talked about earlier in the week. I've been doing these for a couple of years now. The place where I work has occasional Craft Fairs, where suitably-inclined staff bring along things they've made to sell. It's partly a fundraiser for the social club; partly for the sellers. For the first of these I had the idea of infusing olive oil with the fresh herbs (piles of them) growing in our garden. It took a little while to find a suitable oil - it had to be extra-virgin, and local - but my man Steve at Ontrays came through with a good one. When I started I used to have the oil in a large pot on the stove, but I'm now using the MyCook. The batches are smaller, but the control is much better, and I don't have to stand over it. The recipe couldn't be simpler: take oil; add herb; heat. I'm using bay leaves today; the suburb I live in has big bay trees everywhere, and the oil is my favourite of those I make (and later I'll tell you about bay ice cream. [Drools, delicately]). After the mix has been going long enough and hot enough to both get good flavour and seriously inconvenience any bugs, I allow it to cool, then bottle it. I print the labels too. On my inkjet, so don't get them wet. We're off for a picnic shortly, so I'll be back later to show you what we had.

Amazon Canada still has mine down for March 7 - I'm hopeful! Although the trick will be to see how long it takes to re-cross the Pacific. Nathan, you couldn't divert one of the ships from the printers slightly south, could you?

It's nothing to do with food, but you might be interested - the Queen Elizabeth came in this morning as part of her maiden voyage. The longest ship ever to berth in Wellington, I'm told. She's coming to you next, Nick.

[font="Trebuchet MS"]Hi Scottyboy. Yep - requirement #1 was it had to be useable. There's usually just one of us in there, but the three metre island gives us plenty of room if we're both doing something (typically, at the end of the day: me cooking, Jane making a cocktail). Hi Shelby. Me too! Hi Kent. I can't really compare what we have to many other places, but I think we're pretty well served - although sometimes I read some of the cocktail threads here and wonder what they're talking about! Domaine de Canton was a new find last year - great in winter in hot cider (DdeC, for the uninitiated, is fabulously ginger flavoured), and equally so in summer in all manner of things. One of the recipes that came with our first bottle was for a White Orchid - DdeC, cranberry, citrus vodka. We didn't have any citrus vodka (there's plenty available; we just haven't bought it) so Jane substituted half plain vodka, half Angie O's limoncello. What a find! Can't ever seeing us buying citrus vodka now. That's not tequila Stilton's interested in. I took this the day we got him (cheating - he's two years old now) and we celebrated his arrival with vintage Port - which is what one drinks with Stilton, as any Englishman will tell you.

In the 17th century young English gentlemen used to set out on a Grand Tour of Europe to complete their education (in several ways we needn't dwell on). But it's the 21st century and this is eGullet, so by popular request, I present ... a Grand Tour of my kitchen. I share the house with a wife, Jane, and two cats, Bloopers and Stilton. (This is Stilton. He's my baby.) We’ve been here a little over six years and remodelled the kitchen – now the most ‘finished’ part of the house - three or four years ago. Before we dropped a bomb in it, the house had a fairly standard 70’s-style New Zealand kitchen. Most distinctive feature: no bench space. Before moving back to Wellington we’d replaced the kitchen in our Auckland house, so we had some idea of what worked and what didn’t. One thing I’d recommend to anybody considering a new kitchen: get a professional designer to have a look. They’ll listen to your ideas, learn how you intend to use your new kitchen and come up with some ideas you might never have had. In our case, a casual remark that it would be nice to have somewhere out of the way for the cats to eat led to our designer giving us one set of cupboards with a higher-than-usual space below the doors! By the time we came to do this one it was clear that cooking was a very important part of our lives, so we decided to move things around to make the kitchen centre stage. The old layout flowed from the kitchen by the windows, to a tiny dining room, to the lounge and deck. We put the dining area by the windows – still small, but at least there’s something to look out at – lost an internal doorway and took out a wall to give space for our Andrew Scott-designed magnificence: That’s three metres of black granite there. Granite’s lovely stuff; nothing we’ve done has marked it, it polishes up beautifully and there’s nothing quite like working with pastry or bread dough directly on your benchtop. We asked for the bench height to be a little more than standard to accommodate a couple of tall people. My sous vide setup and small espresso machine live on the far end. Of course, when you have a space like that, an ordinary tap just won’t do it - we had to have a lovely sweeping curve. But wait; there’s more: Ever told an electrician you need to connect your tap to mains power? Imagine his face! This worked out to be the most expensive light in the entire house, but it’s (almost) worth it. Under the island on the ‘working’ side we have most of our plates, our knives and forks, dishwasher and rubbish bin. On the other side, behind glass, live our glasses and some of our special serving dishes. The pantry is in perhaps an unusual spot, on the opposite side of the island to where we work. We did have some concerns about it, but it’s worked out fine – you go to the pantry, get out what you need and put it on the island, then come round the other side to continue your food prep. In our Auckland kitchen we’d had a pullout pantry and liked the idea, but couldn’t see the benefit of pulling the whole thing out to access one shelf. Here’s the answer: It's a double pantry. Behind each door we have six pull-out shelves (with soft close - lovely), with three fixed ones above. The ceiling spots come on when a pantry door is opened. Opposite the pantry the induction cooktop sits above more drawers holding pots, mixing bowls and most of the cooking tools. One small drawer is for spices; another for knives (the good ones safely held in wooden slots). Oven tower on the right, fridge on the left. One regret is we didn’t get the double version of the oven, but behind one of the doors above the oven we now have a small microwave/convection oven, mostly used for warming plates. There’s a ‘normal’ microwave behind the other door. I used to have my cookbooks in one of these slots but they grew – eG members will understand, I’m sure. The books now live out in the hall while I try to work out a better, more accessible place for them – Modernist Cuisine’s going to have another impact on storage when it arrives! Gratuitous shot of selected books follows: Confession time: I like toys! And arguably, toys take up even more space than books: Let’s take stock here. On the top, from left, we have a commercial-quality mixer we picked up at an auction of catering equipment, a masticating juicer, the power unit of our food processor and a small slicer. Underneath is most of the rest of the food processor (there’s still some more bits of it in a cupboard!), a MyCook we lugged back from Spain a couple of years ago, an ice cream maker and a deep fryer. There are a few more bits and pieces elsewhere, but that’s most of it. The stainless restaurant-style bench came from the same catering auction as the mixer. I’m still struggling with where to put a chamber vacuum, and a Pacojet, and … In another corner, by the dining table, we keep a modest selection of cocktail ingredients: That’s my happy place. I spend a lot of time in here; it works really well and it’s a delight to have space to spread out (and I say that as someone who’s quite good at cleaning up as I go). I hope you've enjoyed your visit.

TGIF I've avoided talking about my breakfast and lunch this week, because, frankly, they're extrememly uninteresting. Trust me on this. Friday, however, is different. There is a long-established tradition among a selected few of my colleagues that Friday means ... lunch at the pub. And it's good healthy stuff, too: At this table sit Men. Clearly. Our choice of location is D4, upstairs in Featherston Street in the heart of the CBD. We used to go to another place down the road, then its manager, the marvellous Dermot Murphy, opened his own place and named it, I believe, for a Dublin postcode. Another round? And more chips?